Petronet eyes fresh foray into petchem business

Petronet LNG, India's largest gas importer, is looking to reclaim the lost opportunities of the past decade as it seeks fresh foray into the petrochemical business and plans to set up an LNG import facility on the east coast. Oil Secretary Tarun Kapoor, who is also the Chairman of Petronet, in the firm's annual report said the company is looking at setting up a floating terminal at Gopalpur port in Odisha and "is embarking upon a major diversification drive to broad base its business activity and is exploring to have an ethane/ propane import facility at Dahej terminal". Petronet had some years back planned to set up a terminal at Gangavaram in Andhra Pradesh for import of supercooled gas in ships. The company management stopped pursuing that terminal in 2015-16 on grounds that there isn't enough demand to justify a 5 million tonnes a year import facility.